Americans are, fundamentally, optimistic people. Hence, every now and again we're treated to some variant of the story about how America's national security policy is going to be okay again, because George W. Bush is bringing some grownups onto the team. When considering this pattern, it's perhaps worth recalling that in its first formulation the savior/hero figure was ... Dick Cheney.
Americans are, fundamentally, optimistic people. Hence, every now and again we're treated to some variant of the story about how America's national security policy is going to be okay again, because George W. Bush is bringing some grownups onto the team. When considering this pattern, it's perhaps worth recalling that in its first formulation the savior/hero figure was ... Dick Cheney.
Still, hope springs eternal. Michael Crowley's recent dispatch from the department of wild speculation indicates that Cheney will soon resign "for health reasons" and that Condoleezza Rice will step up to take his place. As Crowley notes, "Cheney resignation rumors are about as old as the Bush presidency," so we should probably take this with a grain of salt.
Still, personnel moves really are afoot. Donald Rumsfeld has been fired and replaced as secretary of defense by Robert Gates. Zalmay Khalilzad will leave the American embassy in Baghdad and replace John Bolton at the UN. John Negroponte is leaving his job as director of national intelligence to become deputy secretary of state. Ryan Crocker, a career foreign service officer, will be taking Khalilzad's old job. David Petraeus, everybody's favorite Army general, will now command U.S. forces in Iraq. The adults take charge," crows hardened Bush hater Juan Cole, who regrets only that it's too late in the day for new personnel to make much of a difference.
Color me skeptical that these staff shifts really are changes for the better.
Crocker has the mark of a serious diplomat, someone worthy of important posts in the Middle East. Then again, his predecessor Khalilzad was, by all accounts, one of the most competent, knowledgeable, and hard-working people in the Bush administration, and it never did him much good. Khalilzad's predecessor was Negroponte, who likewise failed to accomplish anything, and is now getting another promotion. Negroponte, indeed, captures the crux of the issue here.
The habitually psychotic Frank Gaffney hates Negroponte, so perhaps his appointment is cause for cheer. But here's the rub. People say Negroponte is competent, which, in the debased Bush years, has become a compliment rather than faint praise when it comes to senior officials. But he's also a liar and a crook, someone whose conduct during the Iran/Contra episode makes him more worthy of a jail cell than a high-level appointment. Much the same could be said of Gates, the hero of the hour at the Pentagon. That Bush's follies have somehow managed to make Iran-Contra figures look like the good guys in the GOP policy universe is remarkable, but it doesn't actually make them good guys.
Besides which, the sheen is already coming off Gates. It turns out that Bush really was frustrated with Rumsfeld's conduct. Frustrated, it turns out, because Rumsfeld was relatively unenthusiastic about the idea of escalating the conflict by deploying even more troops to Iraq. With Gates, we'll get more bloodshed in Iraq, and an even larger defense budget. Grownups, hooray!
Meanwhile, word continues to float about that Bush is taking the rare step of appointing a naval officer, William Fallon, to run Central Command as part of some sort of war-with-Iran gambit. The Army and the Marines, you see, are all tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the Navy still has assets a-plenty with which to pound Tehran. Or, as warmonger Ralph Peters put it, "In short, the toughest side of an offensive operation against Iran would be the defensive aspects -- requiring virtually every air and sea capability we could muster."
To which I'll respond with an "in short" of my own. The essential problem with the Bush administration's conduct of national security policy is Bush and that's not subject to a personnel shuffle. He's a very bad president whose administration constantly errs on the side of overestimating the efficacy of force, underestimating the ability of genuine diplomatic compromise to advance American interests, and being woefully ignorant of the world.
The important thing to recall is that there were plenty of moderates in the Bush administration at the beginning. People like Colin Powell, Richard Armitage, Richard Haas, Richard Clarke, Rand Beers, and Flynt Leverett gave Bush reasonable advice. But insofar as advice is reasonable, an unreasonable man will reject it in favor of less-sound options. As long as some bad idea or another is kicking around inside his administration, this president is probably inclined to take it. After all, this is the president who managed to finally take everyone's advice to get rid of Rumsfeld -- only to then go and shift Iraq policy so as to make things even worse.
That's the problem with having a bad president put into office and then re-elected -- he keeps doing bad things no matter how many personnel shifts get made. And he'll be there for two more years. It's a frightening thought, and it's more pleasant to imagine some cadre of sensible Republicans riding to the rescue. But even though the truth is hard to bear, it's better to face reality: Nothing will change until a new president is in office.
Matthew Yglesias is a Prospect staff writer.
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